by Liz Meldon
Ah, yes, Mason, Kent, and Evan—the trio of young male mathematics teachers who also managed the basketball club, the AV club, and all the games nights. Students loved them. A few of the staff idolized them. If they could find a way to inject hard liquor into any staff function, they’d do it like their lives depended on it.
Not my type of colleague. We hadn’t exactly got on since I’d started; they thought I was the bumbling boring Englishman I portrayed, and I thought they were fuckwit morons.
“Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god,” Emma whispered, and when I glanced over, her eyes brimmed with tears. For fuck’s sake. This wasn’t the end of the world—no need to look like that. Huffing, I zeroed in on Foster, and in the time it took the man to blink I was directly in front of him, a hand on his shoulder, our gazes locked.
“James Foster,” I murmured, my influence washing over him, leeching out my fingertips, wafting on my breath, in my voice. The principal straightened as his pupils dilated under my control. “You never saw us. You went to the art room, found your cups, and returned to the party. This hallway is empty.”
“I never saw you,” Foster parroted back to me, as all humans ensnared by vampiric influence were prone to. “This hallway is empty. I’ve got my cups.”
“Good.” I gave his shoulder a little squeeze, the pressure paired with a predatory smile. “Now—off you trot. Beer pong awaits.”
He matched my smile with a dreamy one of his own before toddling along down the hall, bypassing Emma without so much as a cursory glance. I waited, watching for the stairwell door to finally swing shut, and then faced the wolf with a Now, where were we? on the tip of my tongue. But that fucking look remained, painted across her features—one of horror, embarrassment, and shame—and when she met my eye, I could practically taste the shift between us.
“We can’t do this,” she said, voice barely above a whisper, strained and tight. I frowned, readjusting my ever-present erection so it was less obvious jutting out between us.
“We’re fine.”
“I don’t want you doing that”—vampiric influence: so helpful for dealing with irritating interruptions—“to the humans here. It isn’t right.”
“Emma,” I said with a cool chuckle, “you’re not serious.”
She smoothed her hands over her hair, her blush no less dampened in Foster’s absence. Her heart thundered, perhaps even harder than when I’d been kissing her, and I tried not to take that as a slight.
“Of course I am—look at what just happened! Foster! Foster happened,” she snapped as she started to right her rumpled sweater, her skewed necklace. “We can’t… If we didn’t live and work in the same place, then sure, maybe, but the risk is just too high here. I’ve been ignoring it for some reason, and I just can’t anymore.”
Annoyance sliced right through all that sentiment, that desire, as if this was a personal rejection of me, which was ridiculous. And petty. “Emma, it isn’t against the rules for staff to fraternize.”
I’d looked it up in the faculty rule book before I ever floated this little arrangement, although I would have proposed it either way.
“No, but it’s frowned upon,” she countered, crossing her arms, jostling my gold gift, “and Foster is super intense about it. Unless you’re married, then he thinks stuff like this”—she gestured between us—“will distract us from our work.”
I couldn’t stop the enormous, over-the-top scoff from flying past my lips, but really. The way Foster looked at Emma on any given day suggested he wanted to fuck her ten ways from Sunday. “This is ridiculous. Nothing’s happened. We’re fine.”
“Yet,” she stressed. “Nothing’s happened yet, but we’ve had more close calls than I’m comfortable with.”
Where had all this come from? Had it been brewing in her little shifter mind all this time, or had Foster triggered something unnecessarily dramatic? Because that was what it felt like: unnecessary drama. I’d dealt with him. We were alone, wearing each other’s gifts, Emma’s scent seeping into my skin. Nothing would stop us from walking the twenty feet to my office and barricading ourselves inside for the rest of the night.
Nothing but Emma, apparently. I bristled as she turned and started off toward the stairwell, her arms still crossed.
“I’m going back to the party,” she said, all that fire from a few minutes ago extinguished. “Are you coming?”
I scowled at her for a moment, then rolled my shoulders back. “No.”
The sole reason I had been so keen to participate in all these pointless holiday festivities, from the mimosa brunch to the movie marathon in our pajamas to the gift exchange, was her. To be around her when she was smiling, laughing, joking, it was divine, almost as intoxicating as her blood. I had no desire to immerse myself back in a sea of colleagues who bored me and support staff who I never spoke to anyway if Emma and I weren’t…
What the fuck had been the point of the last few weeks?
For her and me to warm to each other so that she could walk away?
“So, what, you’re done, then?” Petulantly, I held my ground, expression cold, tone even frostier as Emma stopped just before the door to the stairwell. “That’s it? One mishap and it’s over?”
With a soft sigh, she faced me, clutching the golden moon in one tight fist. “I love my job. I love this school. I love my kids and my co-workers. I don’t…” She wet her lips, blush intensifying again. “I don’t even hate you anymore, but I shouldn’t have complicated any of it with this. So, yeah. I guess I’m done.”
Fucking ridiculous. My annoyance sharpened to outright anger, so visceral and raw, cutting up my chest and threatening to spill out on the floor. “Right.”
“It’ll be easier this way. I mean, we can still be, you know—”
“Friends?” I asked dryly. “Are we friends, wolf?”
We were now, to some degree. It was more than what it had once been—she had knit me a fucking sweater. But I couldn’t stand to hear her say it. We can still be friends. I swallowed the burning desire to tell her we hadn’t been friends to start with, because, wearing this damn sweater, I couldn’t be that cruel. Fucking a shifter had made me soft.
She stared at me for a moment, all the color drained from her cheeks, and then let the gold pendant fell back against her chest. I heard her swallow thickly, even with this sudden and vast distance between us.
“Well, I mean, it’s just sex, right?” Emma held my gaze, each word a perfectly thrown dagger, nailing the target every time. She shrugged, cloaked in a sudden and painfully forced nonchalance, and I adopted a similar air.
“Yes, I suppose it is.”
“Okay, so…” She fiddled with the gold chain. “Are you coming?”
Back to the party—no. Definitely not. Because with my tight chest, my splotched cheeks, my dry throat, I knew this wasn’t just sex, not anymore, and I hated myself for letting that happen. Hated myself for the sentiment, for the fact that I cared, that I craved more than her sweet blood. And I had absolutely no desire to go back downstairs and pretend.
“Fuck off, Emma.”
With that, I stalked off to my office, locked myself inside, leaned back against the solid oak door, brought the sweater to my nose, closed my eyes—and breathed.
17
Emma
“One hour to the new year!”
Solskinn’s most popular pub erupted in cheers, and I lifted my drink to toast alongside tonight’s patrons. Stjernelys was positively bursting and had only gotten more cramped with locals, SIA employees, and folks from the surrounding farmsteads as December 31st went on. Unlike the nights leading up to this, I hadn’t drowned myself in whiskey or vodka or any number of the delicious beverage options offered. It had been beer from dinner to now, and I hardly felt a buzz. Still, the atmosphere was electric as we counted down to the new year, all of us warm and toasty as the temperatures outside continued to plummet.
My grin faltered, however, when Calder and I caught each other’s eye across the tabl
e. His half grin dropped too, and I looked down at my nearly empty pint of lager, cheeks warm, then tucked a few wisps of dirty blonde behind my ear.
We hadn’t spoken in days, not since the night of the staff party, a night that I only remembered in vague detail. I’d been festively drunk leading up to our falling out, but everything after that was a blur. Somehow I’d made it back to my bed, and I learned yesterday that I had Phyllis and Robert to thank for that. Always looking after me, those two.
But Calder and I—radio silence across the board. He barely even glanced my way, so, in turn, I tried not to look at him either, because whenever I did, this nauseating loneliness punched me square in the gut. Every. Fucking. Time. And, you know what? I got enough of that when it came to my own pack; I didn’t need Calder Holloway and his bitterness, his avoidance, his steely-eyed glint, for whatever reason, making me lonely too.
It was petty on both accounts. I could have been a mature adult and just talked to him, but the unsettling effect all this had on me, paired with the look in his eye that night—fuck off, Emma—had been deterrent enough. I might have been drunk on eggnog and lust, but that look had seared itself into my brain, flaring whenever the ache inside me was bad enough. While my inner wolf whined whenever we were in the same room but refused to make eye contact, I remained steadfast, because he was the one who had made a big deal out of nothing.
Sure, I could have put more thought into ending our physical relationship, but things had felt good between us lately, and not just when we were having sex. We could be friends—if he hadn’t been such a petulant jackass.
So, here we were, out with our colleagues, watching them all get drunker and drunker while I nursed my beer and Calder drank nothing. Foster had already fallen asleep at the head of the table, his glittery New Year’s headband catching the dim light anytime he shuffled about, showing no lasting effects from Calder’s vampiric mind control. Phyllis and Robert had been butchering karaoke for the last half-hour, but no one seemed to mind; the academy nurses alternated between dancing on the bar and taking shots with the locals.
And Calder and I sat at opposite ends of the table, pretending the other didn’t exist.
But he was wearing the sweater I’d made him, and my new gold necklace stood out like a neon sign against my dressy black blouse—so what did that say about us?
What the hell were we even doing?
I huffed and downed the rest of my drink, forcing myself to dive back into the endless banter of the male mathematics clique, which, to be fair, was mostly sports talk—college football, NBA stats, world cup predictions—and given what I did for a living, I could get on-board with that.
Even if the person I’d rather be spending my New Year’s Eve chatting with would only talk sports if I pointed a gun to his head.
Or, you know, a stake to his heart—whatever.
The night had been pleasant enough if I ignored the brooding vampire. We’d all squished into one of the school buses for the ride down to the village, a security goon offering to drive us, and watched fireworks in the early evening. The event had been full of families, and while it had gotten me thinking about what the pack was up to tonight, I could distract myself enough with the brilliant display of light and color. From there, it was off to one of the restaurants, where we had a proper Norwegian feast, and then we all marched up the street to Stjernelys for booze and good company and satellite TV to ring in the new year.
In about an hour, we would trudge back outside for more fireworks. I welcomed the bitterly cold air, as the night was clear and the snow had held off, but I couldn’t imagine the inebriated humans around me lasting more than ten minutes before demanding we return to the bus.
And then it would be over. Another year, another semester—gone. In a few days, the kids would be back, and I could find even more reasons to avoid Calder if he continued being a sulky child.
I mean, seriously, this guy. Sitting at the far side of the table, talking over an unconscious Foster with a gaggle of our coworkers, his pleasantness so forced I could smell it from here. That furrowed brow, that tight mouth. His distant stares and aloof once-overs, all the while wearing my Christmas gift.
Did I want to keep having awesome sex? Uh, duh.
Did I enjoy the way my loneliness vanished whenever I was around Calder, around someone who just knew exactly what I was? Sure. I too liked that I didn’t have to pretend, that I could go at him with all my strength, that I could drop shifter lingo into casual conversation without fearing I’d just outed my entire community.
But did I want to keep having close calls, potentially fall out with my boss, and risk my position at the academy? No. Not for a guy who couldn’t even be friends with me after I closed my legs. Not when I felt so, so… vulnerable without him. Not a chance in hell.
As I nodded along, only half listening to Mason lament his fantasy football team’s performance this year, I felt it—that piercing stare from the other end of the table. Sighing, I glanced down at my lager, then lifted my gaze to Calder. Sure enough, there were those bright blues, unblinking as they bored holes in my forehead. A slight flicker of my brow had his furrowing deeper, and he turned away, hand wrapped around his untouched glass of dark ale.
Oh my god. Stomach looping, I rolled my eyes and excused myself. Picking my way through the pub proved more difficult than it had a few hours ago; with all the booths and tables occupied, newcomers had been forced to stand, the crowd pushing fire code limits. Thankfully, the bar was manned by four bartenders and a bevy of waitresses, which meant putting in an order for another lager was far easier than the process of actually reaching the oak-topped counter.
Drumming my fingers on the stained wood, I scanned the rows upon rows of liquor bottles lined up along shelves, then, out of the corner of my eye, spotted a familiar head face-plant. Her forehead hit the bar top with a too-solid thwack, and I pushed my way around the cluster of chatting old men between us, my hand settling between her shoulders.
“Marte?” Without waiting for a response, I pulled her upright. “You okay?”
The nurse’s white-blonde hair had fallen over her face, shielding her angular features, and I brushed it back with a sigh as she muttered something to me in garbled Norwegian.
“What?”
“I-I think I maybe need to go back,” she mumbled, slurring her words, swaying atop the bar stool. When she twisted to look at me, she would have fallen right off had I not been propping her up. “I need… to go to bed.”
From the smell of her, she probably needed her stomach pumped too. She was such a petite thing—tall but slim—and it didn’t surprise me that a dozen rounds of shots might have put her down for the count.
“But no one wants to go back with me,” she added, eyeing my new drink when the bartender set it in front of us. Since I had no desire to wrestle it away from her, or to be soaked in vomit forty minutes before midnight when she caught a whiff of the creamy, spicy, butterscotch brew, I pushed the pint glass away.
“Okay, well…” Although it was downright impossible to see much in the crowd of people, I could pick out the familiar tones of the nursing staff somewhere to the far right. Shrieking, high-pitched giggles and rapid-fire Norwegian gave the group away; with their head nurse back in the States for the holiday, they had really been able to let loose. It’d been entertaining to watch, but now Marte was the unfortunate by-product of all that letting their hair down.
I couldn’t just leave her here by herself, nor did I want any of the guys eyeing her along the bar to “help” her back to campus, not with the rash of local disappearances ruled suspect by the police, possibly criminal. A quick check of my phone told me I could get her to the academy and still make it back for midnight if we left now, and given the security goon who’d driven us was six drinks deep with one of the local girls, apparently I’d be learning how to drive a bus tonight.
“I’m going to take you back to school,” I half shouted, articulating as clearly as I could for her g
in-addled brain. “Give me thirty seconds to grab our coats.”
She nodded, her eyelids struggling more and more to open fully after every heavy blink. Yikes. Shaking my head, I paid for my drink, gave it to the gruff old guy flying solo beside Marte, then told the bartender to watch her for two minutes while I got her things. He gave me a noncommittal shrug, then toddled off to serve a rowdy group at the other end of the bar. Perfect.
“Thirty seconds,” I reiterated to Marte, tapping the counter in front of her. “Stay right here, okay?”
The nurse nodded, her eyes bloodshot. “Okay. Tusen takk, Emma.”
I gave her shoulder a squeeze, grinning. “You’re welcome, but you can thank me when we figure out if I can drive the bus or not; otherwise we’re walking.”
She chuckled weakly, but her expression suggested she either hadn’t heard what I’d said or just didn’t understand the gravity of walking the half-hour trek back to campus in this weather. I pursed my lips for a moment, waiting, watching as her gaze shifted in and out of focus, then nodded. Okay. Coats.
Mine was right where I’d left it on the back of my chair, and I was sure to let the mathematics clique know where Marte and I were headed. Gallant gentlemen that they were, not one offered to accompany us; Kent even had the nerve to laugh at the idea of me driving the bus. Dicks.
Marte’s coat, however, remained far more elusive. The nurses had moved from our staff table to their own booth shortly after we’d arrived, and by the time I came rooting around, all their stuff was one jumbled mess, and not a soul present was coherent enough to help me sort through it. So, I had to hold up every near-identical black, fur-lined coat, one at a time, and wait for some giggling drunk nurse to claim it—hats, mitts, and scarves too. Eventually, by process of elimination, I found Marte’s, but when I shoved my way back to the bar, she was nowhere to be found.
